First night's notes 9/20/06

The Book of Psalms represents a microcosm of the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. In the same way that the Bible is a library ;Psalms is a hymnal. As each book of the Bible resembles an archaeological dig with layer after layer of artifacts from the different stages of the book’ evolution; so too each psalm has its own developmental history.

As a rule the poetry and songs in ancient literature are thought to be the oldest passages having a lengthy oral history and a variety of written versions edited over time. Israel’s 150 psalms are best understood following this rule. Their development helps a us trace the history of worship in the Ancient Near East . Many of these psalms may have originated in the worship of the ancestors of the Israelites. Clan cults throughout the region had sacred places and sacred seasons. The nomadic nature of their lives gave rise to seasonal liturgies at the sanctuaries holy to their tribe. When humans worship, song is nearly always present.

The religion of the Ancient Near East was characterized first by the animism found among primal cultures. These nature cults encountered the divine in the spirits that they believed inhabited all things. In other words , there was no such thing as inanimate. The fascination and the trembling experienced by human beings in the face of the forest, the sea, the storm , fertility,birth , sickness, conflict and death gave rise to the earliest religious impulses. The quest for peace and life and the search for victory over the enemies of happiness drove these human communities draw near to the holy and to control those forces that threatened to destroy their lives. Animism ,even in modern religion provides for a powerful sense of the sacred and often inspires great respect for earth and its resources. On the other hand ,its influence on the human psyche can be quite anxiety-producing . The spirits that surround us are often believed to be capable,not just of blessings, but also of mischief and even malevolence.

One of the first developments in the history of religion is the emergence of polytheism. Belief in the gods seems to be an attempt to bring some order to the chaotic spirit world of animism. This polytheism is present throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The titles under which the clans worshipped their family deities( El Shaddai, El Elyon etc) at the shrines they constructed along their nomadic trails represent distinct gods. Strong evidence of this polytheism among the ancestors of the Israelites helps us understand the later development of the Yahweh religion which would shape the history of Israelite and later , Jewish religion. This stage of religious culture will certainly be a significant part of the songs we will study in the Book of Psalms.

The Israelite people are born out of the Exodus. The symbolic passage through the Red Sea is seen by some as the mythic image of their emergence in birth waters from between the legs of mother Egypt. The descriptions of the Exodus are filled with the hyperbole characteristic of a great nation wanting its origins to be as mighty as the present state of their ascendancy and the great future they hope for. In fact , it is much more likely that a rag-tag band of escaped slaves ,whose tribal identities and religious beliefs were quite disparate, formed the source of the first Israelite identity. The etiology of the Passover provides a good example of this evolution of a people , its culture and its religion.

It is thought that the Passover celebration began as the Festival of the New Lambs in a herding culture. Thus the Paschal Lamb and the rituals of travel. It may be that a communal dance marked by leaping movements in imitation of the young lambs was part of the celebration. One of the other source tribes for the new emerging culture may have been agrarian. The Barley harvest occasioned another Near East spring festival and this may have been the origin of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Over time these festivals merged and the legend of the Exodus became the myth binding the liturgy and the community of believers together.

Another example may be the amalgamation of the polytheistic gods of the Fathers with an Egyptian desert cult to the high god , Yahweh. Some think this may have been the theological synthesis of Moses himself. Though others see it as a much later development. At any rate , the arrival of a monotheist viewpoint is itself a study on evolution. Even the Ten Commandments seems to suggest that the honor owed to Yahweh is the honor due a high god . “No gods before me” indicates that there may very well be other gods but Yahweh is superior to those gods.

The conquest of the land is another of the legends that telescopes and exaggerates to way in which the people of Israel gained (regained?) their homeland. Instead of the biblical lightning thrusts described in Judges and Kings , a long multi-generation pattern of war and intermarriage probably accounts for the United Kingdom we find in the time of David.

Solomon’s Temple certainly played a key role in the standardization of Israelite liturgy . This became a powerful influence on the development of the psalms. In fact , we will observe the phenomenon of the Enthronement Psalms from the coronation liturgies.

The Era of the Divided kingdom gave rise to more varied and less –Temple centered worship and song. The fall of the northern kingdom influenced the yahwhist religion by concentrating worship in a southern kingdom under threat. The fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the 1st Temple had a devastating effect on Israelite worship and we can even hear the lament: “How can we sing the Lord’s songs in a foreign land.” Psalm 137:4. The restoration of Israel in the post-exilic period returned the powerful symbol a central Holy City to the worship life of the Jewish people. It is in this stage of history that the Psalms undergo further editing. The desire for the rebuilding of the Temple influences the reshaping of the 1st Temple’s songs as powerfully as the origin of these songs in their desert sanctuary birthplaces. It is thought that the final edition of the Book of Psalms we have today was completed in 150 bce.

This hymnal was the songbook of Jesus’ synagogue and Temple worship and the Gospel of Mark chose a verse from one of these psalms( Ps 22: 2a) as one of the last words of the crucified Christ.


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